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Rally - Motorsport - Track Day - Rally Driving
2012 Lewana Stages Wrap
WA Rally teams headed southwest back to the Blackwood river area for round 4 of the WA State Rally Championship in late July.
The winter date change made all the difference to the event with recent rains keeping the dust down and improving the surface for grip. Now a fully pace noted event, competitors raced through 116km of plantation forest around Balingup and Kirup, set out in 6 special stages.
At the top of the field, Alex Stone/Hannah Drury had drawn car 1 on the road. The pairing would need all their skill and technology in their WRX to keep their championship points up, especially with the equally matched pairing of Leigh Hynes/Stuart Percival in their WRX also vying for the top spot.
Whilst the Lewana roads were smooth and fast, the terraced hill sides had steep banks on one side and big drops on the other. Not far into SS1, Blair Pugh/Paul Helm rolled their Escort heavily and retired.
The trees too were close in places. Keith Campbell/Richard Harris clipped a tree amidships in their WRX and retired after SS1.
Also having early troubles was the pairing of Garry Whittle and Ryan Doe. Their WRX had suffered power steering failure and then a mysterious drop in engine power from a suspected faulty fuel pump. The pair did not leave the first service and retired.
In SS3, Carlos Deltoro with experienced navigator Bill Hayes alongside ran into mechanical troubles with his ex-works, Corolla Sportivo. The pair had been going well in the early stages, inside the top ten and a sixth fastest time on SS2. This was the 2nd event in a row that the Corolla had suffered mechanical gremlins and an early retirement.
In the outright 2WD championship a huge battle had been forming all year with the main protagonists Dylan King/Andrew Hannigan (Ford Escort) and Kiel Douglas/Anthony Paynter (Holden Commodore). The 2WD lead (and the Ford/Holden battle) seesawed during the day until King/Hannigan found a stray rock in SS5 and damaged the sump too badly to continue.
Another Escort man in the 2WD battle was Geoff Leatt-Hayter who was navigated by Karen Russell on this event. At the Safari rally in 2011 Leatt-Hayter had written off his previous Escort and a new car had to be built. Leatt-Hayter’s team had put in a herculean effort to get the new Escort to the start line of Lewana as the car arrived at scrutineering a few days earlier as basically a rolling shell. In SS5 the simplest of items failed. The fan belt snapped and without a spare, the battery went flat and the engine over heated, causing retirement.
With a trio of Escorts out of the event, the Ford score card looked grim.
Brothers Craig & Scott Puzey also retired on the penultimate stage, their black Subaru Legacy had mechanicals troubles in SS5.
Teams headed out for the last and longest stage of the rally after the last service. At 26km, there was the possibility to haul in a few vital seconds if competitors were game to push in the dark. Anthony Chudleigh/Matthew Hare found the edge of the road in SS6 and a tree with it. The Hyundai Excel was damaged too heavily to continue and made its way back to service on a trailer.
For 2012 the Lewana rally HQ had moved to the Kirup oval from its more traditional home in Balingup. Early in the day an electrical fault in the power supply to the oval had meant some hasty adhoc arrangements had to be made to supply power, particularly for the results team. Despite the dramas and temp flood lights providing more light than lap top screens, the results were in.
In 10th place was the team of Trevor Chudleigh/Toni Feaver. The pair had sorted some handling dramas with their Toyota Sprinter and had a trouble free run keeping pressure on the 2WD championship. Chard Marshall/Sharon Black took 9th in their WRX behind Steve Oxley/Alex White in their current shape WRX in 8th. Sean Keating and Caleb Ash have been gaining experience in the WARC this year and by Lewana, it had come together. Taking big chunks of time back during the rally, Keating/Ash chose to ease off in their Nissan Silvia on the last stage and take a well deserved 2nd place in 2WD and 7th outright for the event. With a margin of just 17 seconds, Douglas/Paynter took the 2WD win at Lewana in their big V8 Commodore and gained 6th outright in the process. In 5th place was the pairing of Travis White and Greg Flood. During most of the rally, the pair had been tussling for third place in their PWRC spec Lancer Evo 9. A flat tyre late in the rally (the 2nd flat for the day) resulted in lost time and dropped them back. John O’Dowd/Ben Searcy had another consistent run at Lewana and brought their Spec C WRX home in a tidy 4th place, increasing their WARC and Group N points haul. The green WRX of Doug Tostevin/Tammy Adams had been in the top 3 place hunt all day. With the flat tyre of White/Flood near the end of the event, the team took 3rd place. Hynes/Percival were charging all day, vying for the win and the points toward the WARC. Often the gap between first and second place was down to 2 or 3 seconds and the team were swapping stage wins in the process. An overshoot on one stage and a few minor issues during the rally resulted in a hard fought 2nd place for Lewana. After the blown turbo at the Experts Cup rally just a few weeks earlier, Stone/Drury were taking no chances at Lewana. They held a 14 point lead heading into the event and needed a strong finish. First car on the road had meant the pair were playing gravel sweeper for the rest of the field and they had to work hard. The pair won stages 1, 3 & 5 and by rally’s end, their margin to win the event was just 12 seconds.